In a general sense, being "born" in the Bible represents one spiritual state producing another, usually some form of love or affection producing or "giving birth" to truth or to desires for good. This is not hard to see: If you love someone, that love naturally gives birth to ideas on how to be good to that person and make him or her happy. This is why sons and daughters in the Bible represent true ideas and desires for good. On a higher level, though, being born represents what the Writings call "regeneration," or the life-long process of putting off our natural thoughts and desires and embracing spiritual life from the Lord. This is what the Bible means when it talks about being "born again" – if we live our lives from the Lord, He will eventually take away our evil desires so that we can be "born" as angels in heaven, free of evil desires and dark thoughts. Of course, these two levels of meaning are really one: The Lord is love itself, and if we align with Him we become forms of love and truth ourselves, expressions of His love just as the desire to do something good might be the expression of your love for a friend.

4609. 'And the sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant-girl: Gad and Asher' means those that serve the exterior ones. This is clear from the representation of 'Zilpah, Leah's servant-girl' as a secondary affection which, as a means, serves the affection for exterior truth, dealt with in 3835, 'a servant-girl' being a means that serves to effect a joining together, as immediately above in 4608. Her 'sons' are the same kinds of means, the essential characteristics of which are represented by 'Gad and Asher'. In the highest sense 'Gad' means Omnipotence and Omniscience, in the internal sense the good of faith, and in the external sense works, 3934, while 'Asher' in the highest sense means eternity, in the internal sense the happiness of eternal life, and in the external sense the delight that belongs to affection, 3938, 3939. These are the matters implied in the listing of Jacob's sons at this point. But how they all fit together, one following another and one included within another, cannot be seen in the light of the world unless this light is brightened by the light of heaven. Yet even then the things that can be seen are such that no words are adequate to express them. This is because human words are the product of ideas formed from things that exist within the light of the world. But ideas that are formed from the light of heaven are so superior to those worldly ideas that no words exist to express them, though they do to a small extent find a place in the thinking of people who are enabled to separate their minds from ideas formed from the senses.